Surgical cables are used in various surgical procedures to secure implants to bones or to hold fractured bones together. Surgical cables may be made from braided stainless steel, titanium, or synthetic polymer in monofilament or braided configurations. For example, one type of surgical cable is made from a plurality of braided stainless steel fibers with a connector at one end of the cable and a free end at the other. The connector includes an opening that receives the free end and a set screw for fixing the free end within the connector. In one instance, a surgeon joins fractured bones together by looping the cable around the bone fragments, feeding the free end of the cable through the opening in the connector, pulling the free end to constrict the loop of the cable about the bone fragments, and tightening the set screw to fix the constricted cable about the bone fragments.
Surgical cables may be individually packaged within sterile packaging and opened in an operating room. In one approach, a surgical cable is wound into a coil and inserted into a plastic pouch. The cable tends to expand within the pouch, which can cause twisting or kinking of the cable. Twisting or kinking of the cable may produce bends that could weaken the cable or inhibit a surgeon from feeding the cable through a cable tensioning device. Further, because a resilient cable may store potential energy when the cable is coiled, removing the cable from the pouch causes release of the energy and causes the cable to rapidly uncoil, which may make the cable difficult to handle.
In another approach, a surgical cable is packaged within a tray having a removable cover. The cable is loaded into the tray by pressing the cable into a channel formed in the tray. This process is labor intensive, as the cable may have to be pressed into the channel one section of the cable at a time. Further, because the cable resists being in the coiled configuration within the pouch, the cable is difficult to insert into the tray. Longer or more rigid cables compound the difficulties present in this approach.
A surgeon or operating room technician may peel the cover off of the tray and remove the surgical cable by pulling the cable outward from the channel. The cable may be coiled upon itself within the channel such that removing the cable from the tray entails pulling the coiled surgical cable outward from the tray. The resilient properties of the surgical cable may cause portions of the cable to rapidly uncoil, twist, or otherwise impair handling of the cable as the cable is withdrawn from its original orientation within the tray. Quickly withdrawing the cable from the tray may magnify the difficulty of handling the surgical cable.